Guillermo is the CEO of Ignite, a political leadership program for young women.
Some editorial writers are keen to describe the looming midterms as "the inflation election." Then again, their average readers are millionaires by household net worth. They skew 62 percent male and in their 40s. The last time I checked, the great thing about America is that it's a democracy. It includes non-millionaires. It includes women. It includes young people. It may still be news to some people, but Generation Z is increasingly influencing the outcome of elections.
Not only is our democracy diverse – the power and importance of the youth vote is also increasing. Gen Z and millennial voters will soon dominate the electorate. And particularly amongst those voters, we can't assume the issues dominating the stuffier editorials are all that count. My organization, Ignite, ran a comprehensive research survey of Gen Z youth recently and its findings were stark.
Members of Gen Z are almost twice as likely to turn out and vote this year than they were in 2018, from 35 percent to 59 percent. While inflation appears to be the leading issue motivating young voters, when you take cisgender men out of the equation, the results offer a notable contrast. For young women as well as trans and gender-nonconforming people, the top issues skew differently. Health care, mass shootings, mental health, racial inequity and abortion are their top motivators.
As political strategists are observing, women are registering to vote across the country. They're doing so in numbers that are unheard of. The recent Kansas primary is a strong test case for the power of reproductive rights as an issue. But it's about much more than abortion. If we're going to call this election anything, let's call it the young women's election. Because it's their voices that are diverging most from the major narratives in the news.
Ask any major political strategist from David Axelrod to Karl Rove. They'll tell you that when you have a large group whose views diverge from major narratives, you need to pay attention.
Gen Z is the most diverse generation on racial lines. About 17 million people will turn 18 between the 2020 and 2024 elections; 49 percent of them will be young people of color. Gen Z is also very queer: 30 percent identify as other than heterosexual, compared to only 5 percent of boomers who say similar.
Further, young people are less likely to align with a given political party. Gen Z now has two candidates — one in each party — with a chance of heading to Congress. Twenty-five-year-old Karoline Leavitt won the Republican nomination in New Hampshire's 1st district. In Florida, 25-year-old Democrat Maxwell Frost also won a crowded primary. At the local level, Gen Z is making even stronger headwinds. We saw 18-year old Shiva Rajbhandari make headlines winning his school board race in Boise, Idaho – and I can name a dozen Ignite young women who launched their campaigns for local and state office this year.
For today's young people, it's clear. Voting is no laughing matter. Some issues at stake are even likely to decide whether the planet is a habitable place to live by the time they grow old. We should at the very least factor their voices more as we shape our own narratives on the issues in any election. But I'm especially talking about this one.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.